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National Parks Traveler Episode 180: Exploring Homestead National Historical Park

National Parks Traveler Episode 180: Homestead National Historical Park

Homestead National Historical Park near Beatrice, Nebraska, isn’t that big, just 211 acres, but as the saying goes it plays much, much bigger. Here you’ll find the National Museum on Homesteading, historic buildings including the Palmer-Epard log cabin that despite its small size – just 14 feet by 16 feet – was home to a family of 12, along with agricultural equipment, genealogy research opportunities, an education center, hiking trails through 100 acres of restored tallgrass prairie and a burr oak forest.

National Parks Traveler Episode 178: Walking Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

Exploring Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
There are 423 units in the National Park System, but a surprising number of people focus on about two dozen parks. Last year, when roughly 300 million visited the park system, just 25 units – the Yellowstones, Grand Canyon’s, Zions, Cape Cods, Blue Ridge Parkways – got 50 percent of the traffic. There are so many overlooked units in the National Park System worthy of a visit. They might not be your final destination, but they’re certainly worth becoming a destination on your traveling itinerary.

National Parks Traveler Episode 177: Following The Oregon Trail At Scotts Bluff

Traveling the Oregon Trail Through Scotts Bluff National Monument
The Oregon Trail stretched roughly 2,170 miles from Missouri to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. It rambled across prairie, sagebrush desert and mountains. From the 1840s into the 1880s, hundreds of thousands of immigrants made the challenging journey, and not all survived. Today more than 120 historic sites, auto tour routes, and markers show us where the Oregon Trail traveled.

National Parks Traveler Episode 115: Western Expansion Through Fort Laramie

Fort Laramie National Historic Site, gateway to Westward Expansion

Appearance of Fort William/John/Laramie as painted by Alfred Jacob Miller pre-1840/public domain

If you're searching for the door that opened Westward Expansion, find yourself at Fort Laramie National Historic Site in eastern Wyoming. It's decidedly a side trip from anywhere, as it's about 100 miles north of Cheyenne, the state capital, and maybe 55 miles west of Scottsbluff, Nebraska. From Interstate 25, the nearest major highway, the drive is not quite 30 miles and 40 minutes from Wheatland, Wyoming.

National Parks Traveler Episode 114: Walking The Grounds Of Fort Laramie

Walking the grounds of Fort Laramie National Historic Site

Fort Laramie National Historic Site in eastern Wyoming is a rare, overlooked outpost in the National Park System. It's not the only 19th century fort in the system, but it is richly steeped in Western history, from the fur trappers and the cavalry to the Oregon Trail and the Pony Express. During a recent visit, Kurt Repanshek and Fort Laramie Ranger Clayton Hanson walked the grounds. In this week's episode, the first of two episodes, they started at the approximate site of original Fort William and headed over to the sutler's store.

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